SUMMARY
This dataset is based on a collection of territories of the Holy Roman Empire that played an important role during the European Reformation according to Schindling & Ziegler (1989 - 1995): Die Territorien des Reichs im Zeitalter der Reformation und Konfessionalisierung, Bände 1-5.
The type of the first denominational switch of these territories (become protestant vs remain Catholic) and its year were coded manually.
The data on territories was enriched by a dataset on letter correspondences between protestant reformers in 16th century Europe.
These data contain the full or partial letter editions of nine famous reformers: Martin Luther, Philipp Melanchthon, Huldrych Zwingli, Heinrich Bullinger, Andreas Karlstadt, Oswald Myconius, Joachim Vadian, Johannes Oekolampad (see main text for sources of databases).
Together, these letter editions capture correspondences between 3,000 individuals which we refer to as 'reformers'.

##################################################

theorytellings_data.csv

Columns in the data set
terr_id
- int
- Unique identifier for each territory.

terr_name
- str
- Name of territory. 

switched
- bool
- Indicates whether a territory became Protestant (1) or remained Catholic (0).

switch_date
- int
- Year in which territory became Protestant. NaN for territories that always remained Catholic.

letters
- float
- Time-weighted number of letters reformers sent to recipients in the territory until the year in which the territory became Protestant. Weights are derived from an exponential decay function with a half-life of 15 years (one generation). This means that the number of letters a reformer sent in 1520 is halved in 1535. For territories that always remained catholic, the time-weighted number of sent letters is computed until the year 1599.

visits
- float
- Time-weighted number of days reformers spent in the territory until the year in which the territory became Protestant. The duration of a reformer's stay in a territory was computed from his letter correspondences. By ordering the sending dates of these correspondences chronologically, a sequence of whereabouts was constructed for each reformer, such as 'Mainz (1520), Wurttemberg (1522), Ernestine Saxony (1527)'. The reformer was assumed to have spent his time between two different whereabouts in the first of these two places. That is, in the example above, the reformer would have been in Mainz between 1520 and 1522. This period was converted into days, which were time-weighted with the same exponential decay function as the letters variable.
For example, if a reformer spent March 1st 1520 in the territory of Wurttemberg, this day would count 0.5 toward the weighted number of visits of all reformers in 1535.
For territories that always remained catholic, the time-weighted number of visit days is computed until the year 1599.

##################################################

theorytellings_model.R

Code to use the above data in a logistic regression model.
This model explains why a territory became Protestant.
Two explanatory variables are tested: the number of letters reformers sent to territories and the number of days they spent in these territories.


